


Phases

by neuroglam



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Fluff, Growing Up, M/M, Yadda Yadda, Yuuri's Victor hoard intensifies, beach walks, developing intimacy, pedestals etcetera, pure and innocent growing love, referenced past unethical behavior towards posters, very wholesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-23
Updated: 2017-01-23
Packaged: 2018-09-19 11:06:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,448
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9437378
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neuroglam/pseuds/neuroglam
Summary: Victor teases Yuuri with a costume from his junior days--one which Yuuri remembers very, very well.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Win contributed to earlier versions of this draft. Eupheno saved you from so much bad writing; you should go and thank her. All remaining mistakes are mine.

 

 

 

 

Art by the awesome [Eupheno](http://archiveofourown.org/users/Eupheno/pseuds/Eupheno)

 

Inspired by these two fanarts at fishfishlove.tumblr.com

 

 

 

“Yuuri,” Victor called out from across the room, holding up a mess of straps, sparkles, and mesh. “Do you remember this outfit? From my last junior gala?”    


Yuuri remembered the outfit. He remembered it really, really well. There might have been a poster involved, too—as in, the one that had hung right opposite Yuuri’s bed where Yuuri could see it from under the covers.

Yuuko and Yuuri may or may have not, um, _admired_ , that poster—and Victor’s grace and flexibility and fitness and flowy hair and glittery straps, and—everything, really. Like, in detail. An embarrassing level of detail. 

“Yuu~ri?” 

Yuuri blinked. _Did that guy just bat his lashes?_ “Um, yeah, sorry, what?”

“The outfit, Yuu~ri! What do you think of it?” 

Yuuri paused. What on earth were you supposed to say when your coach asked you about this? _Me and my best friend used to fangirl at this picture of yours wearing it when we were, like, thirteen, and I may or may not have jerked off to it a couple of times? Well—I say ‘a couple’...”_

“The thing is,” Victor continued, “you’ve been having a little bit of a hard time connecting to your _eros,_ Yuu~ri…” And what was with the Yuu~ri-ing, every time Victor did it and drawled it just so, in that low and husky voice of his, Yuuri forgot the entirety of his previous sentence. 

“Sorry?”

“And so I was thinking…” Victor gave Yuuri a _look_ and let the outfit dangle on his finger. The actual, real outfit that Victor stupid Nikiforov had worn, and Yuuri suddenly had so many questions. Like, did Victor ever try it on without a leotard and tights underneath? Would that outfit have, um, Victor’s sweat on it from practice? 

“… I was remembering how free and empowered I felt when I wore it,” Victor was saying, and where was Yuuri’s mind, again? “…so, maybe, if you were to try it on? Wait, I should have a video of that performance on my laptop somewhere, you can watch it and maybe try to connect…”

“I remember the performance.” Yuuri swallowed. “But, um, this is just the top part, isn’t it? There’s supposed to be mesh and tights underneath, it would be crazy to just…” 

“No, no, I didn’t mean on the ice,” Victor waved a hand casually. “I’d never ask you to do that, that would actually be dangerous. I meant here, just so you can see how it feels on you and connect with the mood?”

“You, um” Yuuri swallowed again. “Want me to wear this. For you. In this room. And, like, connect to my _eros_?”

“Problem?” Victor looked up through his lashes. 

_Honestly, is this guy for real?_

Victor tilted his head to the side, the question still in his eyes. Apparently, he was. 

“You don’t think it will work?” Victor asked.

“No, no, it would; just…” _just, I think it may work a little too well and I don’t think I’m up to standing in front of you, in straps, with a hard-on._ “Maybe we can do it in stages?”

“Stages?”

“Maybe I can have it and try on my own first? In my room?” 

“Hmmmmm,” Victor said, thoughtful, index finger on his bottom lip. “Of course, if it’s what you need. Though it does defeat the purpose, rather. You will eventually need to perform your _eros_ to an audience, Yuu~ri,” and there was that husky drawl again. 

Yuuri was so, so, done with this guy. “Give it here,” he said and walked over, taking the costume from Victor’s hands, trying very hard to act cool and like he wasn’t holding—but he was, and—Victor’s flawless performance, the slight jot of Victor’s hip bone in that poster, his hair, his smile. Victor wearing this, looking at himself in the mirror, turning this way and that, feeling happy and satisfied with his body and excited to perform, and Victor wanted Yuuri to wear it now _and Victor had packed this in his boxes and brought this to Hasetsu—_

Yuuri’s brain ground to a stop.

Victor fucking Nikiforov, five times men’s figure skating world champion, had seen Yuuri’s lame-ass Ice Palace home video and he had packed this and he had shipped it—and himself—to Yuuri’s house.

Allright, then.

Yuuri took a deep breath. “Okay. I’ll try it tonight. But no peeking—if I have something to show you, I will show you when I’m ready. Good?”

“Of course”—and did Victor add just the slightest pause before—“Yuu~ri.”

Fuck.

*~*~*

In the end, Yuuri couldn’t bring himself to put it on. It seemed wrong, somehow; teenage Yuuri had invested so much in this piece of clothing that it felt kind of like interfering with a religious artefact. 

It was arranged neatly on his bed, and Yuuri was sitting cross-legged in front of it, looking at it and thinking. It seemed so ordinary. Glitter, fallen off in places. Darkening metal fixtures. Faux leather, cracked a little bit, the way faux leather tends to get when it’s old. This costume that Yuuri used to fantasize about so much, that captured everything that was transcendently erotic about Victor—it was here on Yuuri’s bed, looking completely and utterly ordinary and a little worse for wear. And Victor wanted Yuuri to wear it for him. 

This was so confusing. 

Yuuri had sincerely thought that the moment he got to be alone with this thing, he’d jerk off to it so hard he’d hurt either his wrist or his dick. But instead, all he felt was like there was some deep lesson about life, the universe, and everything that permeated this entire situation and he was failing and failing to get it. 

Yuuri got up. Stretched. Took a deep breath. Unlocked the drawer where he had quickly stuffed all the Victor Nikiforov stuff he’d ripped off the wall when Viktor first arrived, and pulled out _the poster_. 

It, too, looked a little worse for wear, faded from all the time it’d spent on the wall. One corner was a little frayed, the other torn from how quickly Yuuri’d taken it down, thinking only of how humiliated he would be should Victor ever see it. The paper was crumpled from having been stuffed into a drawer for the past three months. So were the other posters, for that matter. 

Yuuri supposed he might as well tidy them up, even if he was only going to put them away again. 

So there he was, folding posters, with Victor sleeping in the other room, and poster-Victor grinning from the messy stack of papers, and thirteen-year-old Yuuri looking at him and dreaming of something bigger and somehow more than his ordinary life in Hasetsu. 

_Oh_. So that’s what teenage him had done, hadn’t he: when he’d skated, when he’d read every last interview and article, when he’d dreamed about sharing the ice with Victor some day—what it had all been about was _not being here._

But now _Victor_ was here—flesh and blood Victor, with his boxes and his old, smelly dog. So Yuuri had to learn how to be here, too, somehow. To skate for different reasons. To relate to Victor differently. 

_Hm._

Yuuri sighed and gathered the now nicely folded pile of posters. They went back into the drawer, Victor’s strappy costume bunched up on top of them. 

He went to bed. 

*~*~*

There’s a Russian saying Yuuri had learned along the way of pursuing idol-knowledge: t _he morning is wiser than the night before._ It was about how when one was confused or had a hard time, it was good to not try to sort it out all at once. Just sleep on it and you will wake up with your head a little clearer, things a little bit more in perspective. The problem was, Yuuri was awake, but while the mess in his head had a distinctly different quality to it, it was still a mess. 

It was still early; the day had barely broken. Yuuri’s mom and dad, and his nocturnal sister, were still asleep. The house was quiet, but the birds in the tree outside his bedroom window were chirping up a storm and more than making up for it. 

Yuuri went to the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and put some actual clothes on, then went to the kitchen in a sleepy daze and poured himself a bowl of cereal--because it was sugary, and it was nice, and stupid Victor _follow-my-diet-and-run-up-the-hill_ Nikiforov wasn’t here to stop him. He blinked at his cereal bowl. Went back to his bedroom and opened the drawer where the posters were. 

Victor’s costume was waiting there, in a little tangly ball, just like Yuuri had left it the night before. 

Yuuri took it out of the drawer and took it back to the kitchen. He put it next to his cereal bowl, on the dining table. He wasn’t done thinking about it. 

He dug into his breakfast.

*~*~*

Makkachin padded into the kitchen ahead of her owner, who went right for the coffee machine. 

“Did you try it on?” Victor asked quietly from somewhere behind Yuuri’s back. 

“No. Still thinking,” Yuuri said. 

The coffee machine gurgled. Victor opened the cupboard, poured two full mugs and sat down at the kitchen table, giving Yuuri’s cereal the stinky eye. 

He, too, stared at the costume. 

Yuuri raised a questioning eyebrow.

“Just thinking about what fifteen-year-old me would have said if someone told him this would end up on another skater’s kitchen table in Hasetsu, Japan.”

_Tell me about it_ , Yuuri thought. _Though you probably don’t want to know about fifteen-year-old Yuuri’s ideas. Kisses would have been involved—and probably, the butter. In multiple positions._ “You should tell me the story,” he said instead, “of how you came up with it.”

Victor leaned back in his chair and made a tiny, amused half-smile. “Well,” he said. “I guess I had a phase. Or, rather, Yakov thought I had a phase and I thought I was making the most original, creative breakthrough in figure skating.”

Yuuri smiled. 

“I was an abstract skeleton, believe it or not,” Viktor said. “There was something about inhabiting trite tropes—that was the skeleton—and exiting them at the same time—that was the ‘abstract.’ It was my last gala in the junior division, and as everybody else’s senior I was absolutely certain I was expressing myself more deeply and originally than all of those babies with their stereotypical ballet-inspired outfits.

“No—don’t laugh at me, Yuuri, this was serious business! Yakov kept muttering, _damn teenagers_ , and, _this is not an abstract anything, this is a stripper outfit_ , and, _I don’t want to see you in that unless it’s on top of a leotard—_ and I was so, so misunderstood.” He paused. “Though I wasn’t going to let that stop me. I mean, who would expect and old geezer to understand anyway, am I right?”

Yuuri pushed his empty cereal bowl to the side and took a sip of coffee. 

“Thank you for telling me,” he said, his eyes crinkling up at Victor as he smiled. It felt like Victor had solved the mess a little bit, telling him this story. Yuuri knew he would treasure it, and it was weird—good weird—how its preciousness felt compared to that of old posters and interview quotes. 

Yuuri reached out to touch the costume. Victor’s eyes followed his fingers as they sunk into the fabric. 

“Can I keep it?” he asked. 

“The costume?” Victor said. 

“Yeah. Not to wear, just…”

“Okay,” Victor said quietly.

“Thanks,” said back, and smiled.

He decided the costume should live in the drawer with the posters—maybe in a ziplock bag for protection. 

He also decided he needed to think.

“I’ll go walk at the beach,” he said. “I’ll take Makkachin with me?”

“OK,” Victor nodded. “I’ll start another pot of coffee. Your house is so peaceful in the morning,” he said. “Then I’ll meet you there and we can head up to the rink.” 

*~*~*

Yuuri knew Victor was near even before he approached--Makkachin had sensed him and raised his head from where it'd rested on Yuuri's thigh. It took him some time to come sit next to them, though. Yuuri didn't know what to make of it--Victor standing, a short distance away, watching him and Makkachin sit on the rock where they usually finished their walks. 

Maybe Victor needed time to think, too. 

Eventually Victor moved to join them, his steps crunching on the stones. He sat and looked out at the ocean. 

“Thank you for telling me that story, earlier,” Yuuri said. The gulls cawed overhead. "Please tell me more stories like that, when you remember." He sunk his fingers in Makkachin's soft fur, and scratched. 

“Hmm,” Victor said. "Yuuri should tell me more stories, too." 

They listened to the waves in silence.

“Why did you come to Japan?” Yuuri said. He had asked Victor before, but he hoped this morning, the answer would be different.

“Well.” Victor picked up a pebble, small and round, and twirled it on his palm. “Yakov thinks it’s a phase,” he said. 

Yuuri smiled. “And what do you think?”

“Maybe it _is_ a phase,” Victor says. “Or, maybe like that kid trying to bring skeletons into classical figure skating, I’m just trying to leave junior division behind.” He rolled grey pebble around in his fingers. “Trying to see what unique perspective I can bring into the world, even if looks like abstract skeletons to everyone at first.”

“You’re a good coach, you know,” Yuuri said.

“I’m really not. At least not yet.” Victor looked down at the pebble in his hand. “I can’t even make this guy I’m training connect with his _eros_. I tried everything I could; even gave him my skimpy costume to wear, but he doesn’t want to.”

“Well. Maybe it’s not you. Maybe it’s he who needs to change the way he sees himself and try something new.” 

“Hmm,” Victor smiled and closed his eyes. “I think I would really enjoy that, discovering what that something’s gonna be.”

Yuuri looked at Victor's lashes, the way they fell--long and pale. Then, at his lips. 

“Can I ask you something?” Yuuri said.

“What?”

“This might be a little weird, but can I keep that pebble?”

Victor did a double-take, like he only now realized he’d been playing with it all along. “Sure,” he said and handed it over. 

It felt warm in Yuuri's palm. Tonight, he’ll put it in the poster drawer. 


End file.
